Any chance of a site review [MOVED]

I have been helping a client with this website and his on site SEO too, and his most important keyword is 'Antique Clocks' although for other keywords and keyword sets he doing much better, such as 'Antique Clocks For Sale', 'Antique Clocks London' and so on.

So to get back to what I have done.

I have used Google Webmaster Tools and have the green number score for speed, leverage browser caching, gzip, image compression and so on.

The page loads very quickly, there next to zero errors in W3C validator, we have addressed a lot of his bad links, and have been busy building links and have CDN on the server and had made sure we got good titles, no duplicates and have alt tags and titles on images and links, and there probably more but cant remember.

So I wondered if someone wouldn't mind having a look at this site and seeing if there anything standing out that I may have missed. This will also help in my learning, but please understand that I have had a go at this, but don't get why after 6 months the home page hasn't really moved from page 5 for the keyword 'Antique clocks'

It's highly possible the site was affected by a Google update or manual penalty.

Looking at SEMRush, I see some notable dips over time. One is between December 2012 - February 2013. There were a few Panda updates during this time. Also, I see a dip between April and May 2013. The Penguin 2.0 update occurred on May 22, 2013 and might have affected the website.

Looking at its backlinks, I still see a lot of low quality sites using the term "Antique Clocks" as anchor text. Having a few backlinks with this phrase is understandable, but AHRefs shows roughly 33% of the total backlinks use this exact phrase. If the links you say you are building for this client have "antique clocks" as anchor text, you're actually doing more harm than good. Google favors natural links, and natural anchor text is usually branded or even URLs.

If these are the types of links you're building, stop right now. You should be earning natural links with quality content.

Thank you very much for getting back to me, and from your reply can you confirm that in terms of on site SEO we doing ok, and the problem lies in the low quality backlinks most notably the ones that have 'Antique Clocks' as anchor text.

We aren't building links that way anymore, we are using social media and using more conversational type linking so I'm pleased we identified that too.

So do you think that we can be happy with how the site is, its just these bad links we need to sort out.

We are using a site called removeem.com which is great, and am in the process of going through each one and making notes, and this is where as you pointed out we can see the bad links with antique clocks as the anchor text, amongst a load of other stuff.

But when I go to the site to request a removal of the link, if there contact details there them mostly want money for it to be removed, or there no contact details at all.

So is this scenario where a disavow file comes into play, and what's the best procedure using the disavow file, and will it help.

I cannot confirm 100% that the site doesn't have some issue with content. For example, your /search/ pages (for clock types) include only snippets of text from the product pages they link to. They also don't include any original content - these would be great pages to explain the desirable traits of, say, Mahogany clocks in comparison to Walnut clocks and vice versa. Not the best practice, but low priority compared to the backlinks. I will say the content is not over-optimized and it does appear original to this domain.

Links are definitely the biggest risk factor and the most likely culprit of your traffic loss. It sounds like you did due diligence with link removals and a disavow is definitely the way to go. Generally with a first disavow, they should be kept fairly light. The goal is to disavow only the links negatively affecting the site and nothing more, because taking away good links can lead to further traffic loss. If you're not confident in your ability to distinguish a good link from a bad one, I recommend hiring someone who is (not accusing, you just said you're still learning and I wouldn't want your client to lose traffic unnecessarily). Once the disavow is finished, upload it to Google Webmaster Tools (or have your client do it) and then we all play the waiting game.

The client has just got back to me also saying that he got in contact with one of the directories and he replied asking for £820 to remove the 297 links on his site that we think are causing a lot of our problems. He doesn't want to, but what has spooked him is that the guy got back to him saying that disavow doesn't work.

I think what has sort of confused us is that we got a disavow file already made and it was updated about 2-3 months ago, and we haven't really seen any movement or positiviness.

That's extortion. Of course he said the disavow won't work, he wants money. Disavows do work, but they take time.

With Manual penalties, Google tells you they're there and they will provide you with feedback on your disavows ("there are still links that violate Google's guidelines" or "manual penalty removed"). With Penguin, it's anyone's guess as to whether or not it worked. You just need to monitor traffic regularly. After 2-3 months, for you to not see any recovery, it suggests that you should revise the disavow and be more aggressive.

Be mindful, when you're slapped with a penalty or filter the purpose of the disavow is to clear the wreckage. You don't always see an immediate traffic recovery. A constant influx of new, positive signals is required to earn back your traffic.

Great that's what I thought, surely they cant hold you to ransom like that.

We have checked and we haven't got any google manual penalties, so it sounds like its def penguin.

OK so thanks Adam, it seems we on the right path and will go through the site again and take a look at a few issues like you pointe out, and will up the ante with disavow. If you or anyone else have any suggestions, I am all ears (eyes).